Wrathy wrote:I also wanted to discuss the concepts of dual specilization and what we will be using it for in Cata. I have always been a tank who has both specs prot. Originally it was one for main tanking normal instances and one for anub'arak, then it transitioned into Threat vs. survival. And finally, when HM LK came out, it was threat and HM LK spec.

Going into cata, with the glyphs, and the talent choices that we have, it will be more of a necessity for myself, and many paladins to have a spec for single target tanking and one for AoE. Moving talents into Hallowed Ground, replacing glyphs to maximize threat in AoE situations, etc will be necessary for min/maxing.

Unless encounter design is significantly different, I don't anticipate the need to swap out to an AoE spec for raiding. Apart from the odd gimmick fight, I would think AoE would just be for trash.

Wow, you work fast theckhd - less than 24 hours between my requesting advice and you posting this guide. Thank you so much!

At this moment, I am thinking of going for your "default" build but switching the 3 points of divinity into hallowed ground and a third point in reckoning. Hallowed ground may not be worth it, but consecration is such an iconic spell, I really dont want to see it weakened more than need be. I might have to go for divinity if raid survival becomes a big issue but for the early phase of the Cata, I will be mainly soloing and doing 5 mans.

My question is whether 3/3 reckoning is better threat and dps than 3/3 rule of law, as the core still allows me to switch between the two. I know the numbers may change, but what is people's judgement about this at the moment?

Divine Protection is now our Shield Block. 20% reduction on a 1-minute timer means we'll have it available a lot. Presumably it stacks with other cooldowns, so you could AD+DP every 2 minutes if you wanted to. It may only be 20% reduction, but it's a safe cooldown to hit at the first sign of danger because it'll come back up quickly.

Ardent Defender is still very powerful. The reduction may only be 20%, but the Guardian Spirit proc easily makes up for it. If you've ever heard your healers say "you died with half a second left on my Holy Light," you'll recognize how important that GS proc is. It's the cooldown you pop when you drop into the danger zone. I think that if you're going to skip this, you're not going to be taken serious in progression raiding. If all you're doing is relatively easy stuff (instances, overgeared raids) then you might get away with skipping it.

GAnK is our new BubbleWall. It should be our first choice of cooldown at high health, especially for proactive stuff. Know a Soul Reaper is incoming? Pop GANK.

There's also something to be said for the new health & damage model. When your death is a longer, slower process than getting 2- or 3-shot, damage reduction cooldowns become much more powerful. Even a 20% cooldown is a significant effect, because it's buying your healers a lot more time to heal you. You also have the option of using GANK and DP on cooldown to reduce the mana load on your tank healers, saving AD for the real "oh-shit" situations that might kill you. I think a lot of people are making the mistake of viewing AD in light of the Wrath damage/health model, which is how they're coming to the conclusion that it's weak. It's a lot stronger when 20% reduction buys you a few seconds and 15% of your health is on the order of a boss attack.

Thoughts on "AoE specs":

I don't think it will be necessary to do so. The only AoE talent we don't take as part of the "default" spec is Hallowed Ground. While 20% Cons damage is nice, I don't think it's going to be particularly game breaking. Remember that Cons no longer has 100% uptime, so while it will hit harder, HotR and Holy Wrath (especially with WotL) will be much larger components of our AoE threat.

Will speccing Hallowed Ground make AoE easier? Sure. Will it make the difference between being able to AoE tank and not AoE tank? Almost certainly not, that would require incredibly tight tuning, and I don't see that happening.

That said, for leveling/dungeons I could certainly see taking it over Divinity or Rule of Law.

Thoughts on TPS talents:

I haven't run the numbers yet, we're probably a week or so away from me having anything worth posting on that topic. However, here's my impression based on a few rough guesses:

Reckoning looks like it will be a lot stronger now. For single-target, I expect it to be better than almost any of the "boring TPS increase" talents in the tree. I think Crusade and Wrath of the Lightbringer are going to be good as well, while Rule of Law and the Holy DPS talents will probably bring up the rear.

Again, this is speculation, and my own code might prove me wrong on any of this, but I think those are reasonably good guesses given what we know.

For the Tier 3 point, you can choose Wrath of the Lightbringer or Hallowed Ground from T3 or Guardian's Favor from T2. Most people will ignore GF and make this a choice between increasing their AoE threat with HG or increasing their single-target threat through WotL.

I came here to post a question regarding an AOE-spec, and saw this answer:

Thoughts on "AoE specs":

I don't think it will be necessary to do so. The only AoE talent we don't take as part of the "default" spec is Hallowed Ground. While 20% Cons damage is nice, I don't think it's going to be particularly game breaking. Remember that Cons no longer has 100% uptime, so while it will hit harder, HotR and Holy Wrath (especially with WotL) will be much larger components of our AoE threat.

Will speccing Hallowed Ground make AoE easier? Sure. Will it make the difference between being able to AoE tank and not AoE tank? Almost certainly not, that would require incredibly tight tuning, and I don't see that happening.

That said, for leveling/dungeons I could certainly see taking it over Divinity or Rule of Law.

I think a discussion of this nature is warranted in the "common builds" section - at least a sentence to say you don't think it's necessary, perhaps eventually with a link to the TPS analysis of a tank with and without hallowed ground.

Yeah, I fully intend to address that question, but at the moment I don't have the data to back up any assertions. That's why in several sections of the guide, I've shied away from making definitive statements about TPS talents. It's entirely possible that the numbers will show my intuition about WotL and HG to be wrong.

Once I have numbers to work with I'll be reviewing the guide and editing or adding that sort of thing.

Wrathy wrote:After looking at the nerf to Divine protection (unless its a bug on the cata side of wow head), dropping our bubble wall down to 20% makes me think I will lean towards needing more cds and making Ardent defender a necessity. If the best a paladin can do is 20%, then we are far lower than the other classes and will need more cds to chain.

Shield Wall is 40%IBF is 30% plus the ungodly amount of self healing they can doSurvival Instincts (60%) and Frenzied Regen (30% hp boost) are both superior as well

Here is for hoping for more balance...

GAnK is 60%.AD is 20% with cheat death.DP is 20% (1 min cooldown).

Our cooldown loadout at 80 sucks. That's not a major concern. Our cooldown loadout at 85 is pretty amazing. GAnK competes well with the other classes "major" cooldowns, AD competes well with the "minor" cooldowns, and DP competes well with the "really minor" cooldowns.

In fact, in each category, ours tends to be best in breed cooldowns. GAnK is as good as anyone elses major. AD is better than Last Stand or Frenzied Regen, and DP is worse than Shield Block for pure melee, and worse than Anti-Magic Shell for magic, but it does address both situations reasonably competitively.

With glyph of Divine protection we could actually the preferred tank on heavy magic fights giving us 40% magic reduction 10 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown. As far as CDs we could use one almost every 30 seconds.

sec)000:DP (20% or 40%)030:Gank (60%)060:DP (20% or 40%090:AD (repeat if no AD)(20%dr+cheat death once)120:DP (20% or 40%)150:Gank (60%)180:DP (20% or 40%)210:-- (repeat if AD used)

So as you can see even using AD as a ohh shit we could keep Damage reduction from other cool downs very often. 30 seconds every 120 seconds without using AD (1/4 uptime) or 70 seconds every 210 seconds with AD (1/3 uptime)If you consider that the main source of damage was magic with the glyph of DP we have a lot of magic damage reduction and AD means the breath itself never kills us. Heck if you really really wanted to as well you could taunt then pop divine shield for 1-3 seconds to have a endless CD cycle (also have LoH to use every 8/10 minute as well).

I would would say that LoH/BoP/DS could be considered cool downs as well but you would have to know how to use/time them properly to be considered.

theck, this is probably on your list of things already, but It would be nice to see when reckning reaches allmost full up time with what mastery rateing, and when you should only put 1 or 2 points into that talent for max single target threat.

Ofcause this depends on your avoidance and boss attackspeed, but would like to see some calculations like you did with the old reckoning at some point.

Keep up the goos work, huge fan of theck's mathlab.

on a side not, it looks more and more like we will be running with two tanking specs: 1 for aoe and 1 for everything else. Kinds sucks that we cant have an offspec for say ret..

Thought without action is a daydream.Action without thought is a nightmare.

I'm sure some of you will go....OMG!!! no AD!!!, but the whole point of a beta is to try stuff out, and that's what I've been doing. The glyphs shown are in game, but some are incorrect as to being prime or major glyphs. Still you get the idea.

I expect we'll get a new beta build shortly with a pass at the actual damage numbers. ATM CS is simply to weak to even use, but I'm sure it will be adjusted to be more in line with HotR.

You have a divine favor glyph? Unless that's just a strange placeholder thing, its a tier 3 holy ability.

Todays build destroyed other thoughts on this spec since reckoning is down to 2 points and they moved divinity over to prot now and that protector talent for imp ret aura etc is a self heal thing. Also WotL now = 60% increase to CS and Judgement damage! Add that to crusade and CS is almost double it's default. Looking back at this fact, I would now question how much haste to buff reckoning is worth compared to ensuring you have more crit for CS with Rule of Law... they are making the WoG spec a little more appealing with the Holy Shield addition, but I can't see it being worth it.

Anyway, the part that still matters is in response to Arincia:

Arincia wrote:20% melee attack speed buff and 6/9% haste from JoTP achieving a 2.0 second attack speed on a 2.6 speed weapon. I think that haste could really be a solid threat choice depending on the situation.

Haste needed for 2.6s swing down to 2s should be around exactly what your wrote. So why would haste as a stat be a "tanking stat"? I believe the rating curve goes to 128 at lvl85 vs 32 at lvl80, so gear stats would definitely be unfavorable methods for getting enough haste on tank gear to soft cap reckoning for a slow weapon.

As for spec in general, the topic's original mmo-champ links are broken now with the new build, but I wonder about the relegation of Eye for an Eye to "pvp" talents. Has any testing been down on this? Many boss encounters in ICC had spell damage involved though I'm not sure if say Marrowgar's coldflame is his or the "environment's" what about splash/aoe damage components on fights like Rotface,Dreamwalker (does the abom gut spray disease count)? Surely LDW's frostbolts would be a good threat/dps boost when they hit... or what about Sindragosa's breath? Surely this will be decent dragon talent. I'm just not sure there are enough tank and spank encounters that our "default" should be to ignore all magic damage.

Finally, I love the names! It made me lol:

Meloree wrote:We have Divine Barkskin, Guardian of the Ancient Shieldwall, and Ardent Defender.

As for E4E, it would be an incredibly gimmicky talent. On a fight like Lady Deathwhisper, it would be a noticeable threat boost, because she tends to chain-cast frostbolts. Most other bosses are primarily melee though. Even dragons, with their breaths, might not put out enough magic damage to make this talent worthwhile. It'd really depend on the frequency and magnitude of the breaths.

Yeah, I figured coldflame wouldn't work, but what about shadow-physical like Soul Reaper?

Also, to correct my earlier post, the melee haste buff has been nerfed to 10% with this latest build, so even JotP won't provide enough haste for proper reckoning maximization on a slow weapon. If I did the calculation right, haste rating required at 85 would be 2291 at 0/3 1851 at 1/3 1436 at 2/3 and 1045 at 3/3 to reach 2s with a 2.6s.

Seems like reckoning won't get that 4th swing outside of Bloodlust without stacking haste which would seem unwise as a tank. I'm sure we'll see some matlab for it later, but I'd say a faster weapon with same stats would be comparable to 3/3 JotP + slow weapon... so maybe go faster weapon and get another talent? For instance 3/3 JotP excludes a 3rd point in Rule of Law

Well as i stated (or didn't state) it depends on the nature of it. If it is only white hits and no abilities included then haste could be a viable stat behind hit and expertise (competing with crit depending on how everything looks). WIth 10% haste nerf we can still work backwards to see what the highest possible speed could be. 2.4= 2.001 delay while 2.6= 2.18 so we would need 9% haste at 2.6 (believe you had already figured that out)

So 2.4 speed might be the optimal speed setting for reckoning but only if it cannot proc off a ability in that 8 second window. The main reason to do so would be increase our threat over time from additional white hits with seal effects. So even regardless of reckoning dropping our auto attacks to a lower timer does have the benefit of more passive threat from seals. That said a different question would be 2/3 in divinity with 4 talents to max out 2 of other optional talents or make it 3/3 and reduce it to 3 which is only enough to only max out 1 of them and partly in another.

Well, the argument is that if your hasted weapon speed is 2.0 or less, you can use up all 4 swings in the 8-second period. If it's slower, you'll usually only get 3 of them. Thus, one would expect a discontinuity in Reckoning DPS as you cross that threshold.

That said, I could have sworn that we had this argument before and someone came up with a proof that it was, as you suggested, weapon-speed independent. But for the life of me, I can't remember the justification.

Ah, thank you, that's exactly the argument I was looking for. So my memory isn't as bad as I thought it was. There is a discontinuity (at least in the first derivative), but it's due to fast weapons giving you less overall damage. Anything over a 2.00 hasted weapon speed is thus equivalent.

Another thing to note is that the derivation given there doesn't consider seal procs. However, it's easy to see what happens when you do. Any seal proc that does a fixed % of weapon damage is irrelevant, it will act exactly like white swings. On the other hand, any seal proc that does a fixed amount of damage (i.e. X + sp*Y +ap*Z) will favor faster weapons (at which point we'd need to do some more calculations to figure out the break point).

Luckily SoT is weapon damage based, so the point is mostly moot. Slow weapons it is.

Seal of Righteousness is also partly weapon based, while not based on weapon damage, it does have a modifier for weapon speed to determine proc strength. For Seal of Justice and Insight I believe proc chance is PPM based, so slower weapons would have a higher chance to proc per swing. Doesn't change much of course, it just makes it even more certain that slower weapons are the better choice.

Chicken wrote:Seal of Righteousness is also partly weapon based, while not based on weapon damage, it does have a modifier for weapon speed to determine proc strength. For Seal of Justice and Insight I believe proc chance is PPM based, so slower weapons would have a higher chance to proc per swing. Doesn't change much of course, it just makes it even more certain that slower weapons are the better choice.

Yeah, anything which has a weapon speed modifier will be Reckoning-neutral. In my current code, I has SoJ working like SoR with lower coefficients, which if correct means that SoI is the only seal that still works on a PPM system.

I have a vague recollection of SoR being a static damage amount early in Classic, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I'm pretty sure it was changed to a speed-scaling model by the time I returned to the game in BC though.

Glad to see some past research on this has been done... would be more interested to see how that interacts with haste and JotP compared to other threat talents... as well as how much of a "hit" we take to avoidance/mitigation seeing as how the "tanking weapons" are all fast

Anyone got practical experience from the beta or PTR that would be useful here?

For example, anyone tried to tank Marrowgar trash or Halls of Reflection without Hallowed ground? And/or with Avenger Shield glyphed? I am a little nervous that the loss of seal of command may make getting aggro on trash difficult - although I guess we still have HW and HotR.

Also, how useful was Word of Glory at level 80? Did healer's risk running out of mana? Is it a survival ability - a self-heal that can be a lifesaver? Or is it eminently dispensible?

Given what theckhd has computed about threat and his points about mandatory survival talents, the above questions are the ones that still come to mind. My gut feeling is that, for a casual level 80 spec (farming 5 mans and running ICC normal), I can probably forgo the Word of Glory talents but should keep Hallowed Ground (and AS unglyphed). We will still be overgeared and still playing with the gogogo brigade.

So with the patch hitting today I'm looking at different builds... I'm specifically looking for a general purpose dungeon/raid build as I want to avoid having to respec constantly (although it's really tempting to spec into Imp. HoJ for LK). I would think that Hallowed Ground is a must-have since it appears the intent is for Consecration to be used like a DK's Death and Decay - at the start of the pull to establish multi-target threat and periodically dropped to ensure threat stays.

I'm thinking a build like this for jack-of-all-trades tanking: http://wowtal.com/#k=-wxCEl8.a5o.paladin. Improving the range of Judgements seems like a must-have as well to ensure threat is maintained on casters who are out of range (at least until we can toss Shield to bring them closer) and Grand Crusader's refreshing of AS seems to be really good for AOE tanking as its an extra multi-mob attack.